


In Need of Comfort

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: Dear Listeners AU [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29495439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Alexander Hilbert got resurrected by The Dear Listeners and sent back to Earth to deal with Decima... alongside with a woman who isn't quite the same person as his old lab manager. They've been pretending to be in a relationship in order to make him seem more human to his old crew members, but as Alexander gets ready to go destroy the caches of Decima that Cutter stashed all over the world, as he gets ready to destroy what's left of his life's work, he decides he's done pretending to not want this woman.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character
Series: Dear Listeners AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1455937





	In Need of Comfort

Rosemary was pacing back and forth as if she were trying to wear a hole in the carpet of the bedroom they shared in Pryce’s mansion, something she had been doing for the past fifteen minutes. As she was showing no sign of stopping, Alexander was starting to get a little bit worried.

“Suka?”

She waved her hand distractedly in his direction. “I’ll come to bed in a minute.”

He got to his feet and approached, stopping in her path and putting his hands out to catch her by the shoulders and force her to stop. “Rosemary.”

She sighed and hung her head. “I’m fine.”

Instead of releasing her, Alexander tugged her close. She tucked her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arms loosely around his waist, letting out another sigh.

“The board?” he guessed.

“Brings back bad memories, is all. And I have to pull Cutter to the forefront to make any progress at all with them,” she muttered against his shirt front. “I hate having that man in my brain, even if this time I’m controlling him instead of the other way around.” She nuzzled against his shoulder. “But enough about me. How has your day been?”

“As usual.” He would need to leave Canaveral soon—it would be safer for him to travel the world and destroy the caches of Decima where Cutter had stashed them than to bring them here—but that was not a conversation he wanted to have at the moment.

But, as she did so often, she seemed able to read his mind. “When are you heading out on your world tour?” The question was accompanied by a tightening of her arms around his waist, by a slight tremor in her voice. He did not think that she would ever admit in words to needing him, but such unconscious reactions were almost as good as such an admission when she gave him so little else.

He brushed a kiss to her forehead. “A week. Week and a half. Time to prepare first batch of reagents, and to arrange for delivery of the rest.” The strain of Decima that Cutter had intended to release on the world was not so much more robust than the version Alexander had taken in to space with him, but all it really needed to be was good at killing people, quickly and messily... and that, it definitely was. Alexander kept waking at night to nightmares of it escaping before he could destabilize and destroy all that existed of it, of a world barren of all life but himself.

A wry smile twisted the corner of his mouth. No, he would not be alone. If he failed at the task before him, he could count on Isabel Lovelace spending the rest of her eternity trying to find a way to make certain he died as messy and horrible a death as the rest of humanity.

And there would be Rosemary.

Rosemary made a discontented sound in the back of her throat. “Are you taking Commander Minkowski?”

He shook his head. “Jacobi agreed to accompany me.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder and took a half step back in order to frown up at him. “He did,” she responded, her voice flat. “Now why would he do that, I wonder.”

“You think that he wishes me ill?”

“He _did_ kill you once already. It might be more difficult for him to achieve the same results a second time, but he’s unnaturally creative when it comes to things like this.”

Alexander studied Rosemary’s face for a moment, committing it to memory in the way he had each day since finding himself resurrected, her at his side. “As long as he allows me to finish what must be done before trying such a thing again.”

The stricken look on Rosemary’s face left him certain that she believed Alexander when he said that, and she opened her mouth as if she was ready to argue the point. He rushed in and set about putting her back in good humor instead of letting her start an argument. “You trust the man to do his job, do you not?” At Rosemary’s reluctant nod and twisted smile, he continued. “And you must admit, he solves certain, ah, logistical problems when it comes to disposing of evidence.”

Rosemary laughed weakly at that. “Fine. You have me there. Commander Minkowski has many sterling qualities, but finessing explosives is _not_ one of them.”

Perhaps it was just her laugh that made him feel so, but suddenly, desperately, he needed to not have any business left behind him when he went. Rosemary might allow him to comfort her when she needed it, but up until now, that comfort had always had bounds. In public, she allowed him greater leeway; a warm kiss on the cheek, or a stolen one pressed to her lips in full view of the others, all in service of the relationship they were pretending to. But in private? He was lucky if she allowed him to hold her the way he was now.

And he was tired of it. Tired of this distance between them, tired of pretending that he didn’t _want_ her when it was just the two of them alone. Tired of not knowing whether she felt the same way, or whether he would spend the rest of his life at this careful distance, aching for a woman who did not want him the way he wanted her.

“Come here.” Alexander tugged Rosemary close again, tucked an urgent hand beneath her chin, tilted her head back in order to kiss her, his desperation fading a bit when she started kissing him back. He had been thinking about having sex with her ever since they had come back to Earth; he was not going to let what might be his last chance at it to pass him by.

And this might _actually_ be his last chance. Jacobi might decide that keeping Alexander alive once he had dealt with the remaining caches of Decima was too big of a risk to take. After all, as Rosemary had said, if anyone could find a way to kill one of them permanently, it would be Jacobi. He had that sort of mind. And he had already brought Alexander to one very nasty end.

“I am going to take you to bed,” he murmured against Rosemary’s lips after he had kissed them to softness. “And I am going to fuck you.” The words were not what he would have preferred; if he thought he could have gotten away with it, he would have told her that he was going to make love to her. And that’s what it would be, no matter how he put it. She could insist she was not the Rosemary Epps he had once known so well as many times as she wanted; he was always going to see the woman he had once known so well in her, no matter how far removed she was from her original incarnation.

She frowned at him, studying his face. “Are you sure? I mean…”

“I know we agreed this relationship was a pretense, just to fool the others. But…” He dropped another a kiss to her mouth. ”I have _needs_ , Rosemary,” he growled, resorting to dirty tricks to get what he wanted. “Masturbation is not nearly enough when I am sleeping in the same bed as you every night.”

Her skin flushed dark, and her eyes darted away from his. “Oh.”

“I am attracted. I always have been. You know it.”

“And I’m not saying it’s not mutual. It’s just…”

Alexander stroked the back of her neck, trying to soothe her. “It is not something I want to force you into. But… can you not allow yourself to take something you want?”

She let out a low, frustrated noise. “I’m not her. I don’t… I don’t deserve things that should be hers.”

He brought his hand back to her chin, nudged it upwards again so that he could look her in the eye as he said his next words. “I am not offering this to her. I am offering it to _you_. Whether you are Rosemary or Eris or something in between, this is something that is yours.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh for the love of—“ she pulled away from him and dove for the tissue box on the bedside table. “I don’t know how to accept that sort of thing, you know,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed as she dabbed hastily at the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

“And you say you are not Rosemary,” Alexander said drily, sitting at her side. She had been just as incapable of accepting sincere affection back in the days when he had first known her, some twenty years or so ago, when he had first come to Goddard. He sat next to her and took her free hand in his. “I want you. _You_. As you are. Not just because you are the one who is here.”

She lowered the tissue from her face and studied him quietly, a little frown creasing her brow. And then she shut her eyes, as if she could not bear to look at him in that moment. “All right.”

“All right?” He echoed her words back to her, making certain she meant what he thought she did.

“I’m in need of comforting right now.” Her eyes fluttered opened again, her expression heavy-lidded and sultry. “So _comfort_ me.”

He did not need to be told again. His mouth was on hers in an instant, kissing her with every bit of the pent up desperation he had been holding back for months now. And from the way she was kissing him back, he might not be the only desperate one here.

“Rosemary,” he murmured against her lips, between kisses. “Oh, _Rosemary_.”

If she answered him in words, he did not hear them. Instead he found himself preoccupied by physical sensations, by the hot flick of her tongue against his lower lip, by the warm press of her body against his, by the stretch marks he could feel beneath his fingertips as he slid his hand up under the silky work blouse she was still wearing. But when he moved to unbutton it, she put her hands over his to stop him.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing, I just...” her cheeks flushed dark. “Things sag a whole lot more than they used to, is all.”

Alexander let out a soft laugh. “So do bits of me.” He went for her buttons again, and this time she let him undo them. “As you said, we match, remember?” he said as he worked his way down in agonizing slowness, one button after another. “I would not know what to do with a young woman.” He finished with the last button and opened the front of her shirt, staring in satisfaction at the staid bra and the bounty of cleavage this move exposed, stretch marks and wrinkles and all.

“I’m surprised you know what to do with a woman at all,” Rosemary rasped back, her voice low and sarcastic. “Or didn’t your taste run more towards men back in the day?”

Alexander refused to take the bait. “Only because I knew I had no chance with you,” he said calmly, before bending over her and pressing a kiss to her collarbone, savoring the startled little gasp that escaped her as he did. “If I had once thought“—he pressed another kiss to her, lower down into her cleavage—“that you would allow me this“—another kiss, meant as a distraction while his fingers worked the clasp of her bra—“then I suspect I would never have considered another person again.”

That he never had again after her death was a truth he did not feel the need to put words to. He had loved her then, even if he had not known it, and she had used that love to wound him beyond what he could bear. And all along, she had believed that he did not feel anything more than contempt for her, that his attempts to declare himself were the manipulations of a man desperate to convince her to become a test subject.

The clasp of Rosemary’s bra came loose, and Alexander turned his thoughts to more pleasant matters than the difficult history between them.

Rosemary had been right; things did sag. But as the removal of her bra gave him easy access to her nipples, he could not bring himself to mind it.

“Rosemary really did a number on you, didn’t she,” she gasped softly. A low moan escaped her throat, and she took him by the back of the neck and tugged him up from her chest for another kiss, pressed hot and needy to his mouth. “Tell me,” she murmured, her breath hot against his lips, “did you get this hot and bothered when she was reaming you out for not getting your reports done on time?”

“Why not try yelling at me and find out?” he growled. He nipped sharply at her lower lip.

She shivered. “Awful man. And I bet you haven’t turned in a single report these past few months.”

“Given that it is unclear who I ought to be reporting to, and also the, ah, delicate nature of my current work...”

Rosemary let out an amused bark of laughter. “All right, fine, hard to lecture you for not making a paper trail for something that shouldn’t have one.”

“It was a very good try,” he murmured, burying his face against her neck.

She smelled like Rosemary. Like lavender soap and jojoba oil and cinnamon toothpaste, and underneath it all, like the woman who had, so long ago, sought out the same scents as the products she used now. All those years ago, he had wanted to do just this every time she leaned close to him in the lab, every time she flung her arm across the back of the chair in his office in order to read over his shoulder. Instead, he had hardly dared breathe at all when she was that close, terrified that she would learn caution with him and all those casual touches would go away.

He suspected she had known that. He suspected she had used it to control him back then.

He wasn’t entirely certain she wasn’t trying use this to control him now. But if she _were_ trying to control him with this, at least this time she was doing it on his terms.

And for now, he would take that.

And he would take her to bed, in all the ways he had been longing to.

Rosemary hadn’t seen Alexander for more than two months, not in person, not where she could assure herself that he was here and solid and alive. Some part of her had expected that he would not come back from this trip, that Daniel truly would see the need to destroy the man whose research had lead to such extreme measures in the first place. And given some of the things Alexander had said before he had left, well, she wasn’t entirely certain that he would care enough to fight Daniel, if Daniel decided that Alexander needed to die.

So—somewhat selfishly, she admitted—she had given him a reason to come back to her. Had given him a reason to live that he couldn’t dismiss as mere selfishness of his own. Had let him _fuck_ her, that first night he had asked and every night until he had left, until she knew from the heat in his gaze when he looked at her that he had found something else that he wanted to keep living for. Even as he was on his way to destroy what was left of his life’s work.

But she missed him. Missed him making snarky little comments about the more annoying of the board members as she complained about them, missed him coming to her with some bit of his work that he needed a second mind to work on, and hell, missed him snoring in her bed, too. Adriane tolerated Rosemary’s company in the archives when she got absolutely desperate for a friend, and Miranda didn’t seem to be bothered one way or the other by Rosemary invading her lab as long as Rosemary put the ever-present mess to rights while she was in there, but every other friend Rosemary—the original Rosemary, the real Rosemary—had known was now long dead and gone.

Not that Rosemary had had all that many friends to begin with.

No, she’d been so much better at making enemies. And it seemed she was still quite good at it. If only half of Goddard Futuristic’s board of directors wanted to murder her at the moment, it would be a miracle. She rather thought they were all were pooling their resources to hire a hitman, for all the good that would do. A quick hit with the theta-wave generator Adriane had secreted away in the archives, and Rosemary would be as good as new.

Well, probably, anyway. She wasn’t in any particular hurry to try it out.

Taken all together, the strain of being separated from Alexander and the strain of navigating a board that wanted her dead left her skittish and irritable, and liable to spend her evenings wandering listlessly around Pryce’s mansion, snapping at anyone who tried to talk to her. And the fact that she missed Alexander so much made her more irritable still. She still wasn’t certain she had the _right_ to miss him. She still felt guilty that he treated her like the Rosemary he had once known when she was no such thing. And she resented the fact that she was so attached to him as to _miss_ him, that she felt like she had an aching hole in her chest every time she realized she couldn’t just go home and fall into his arms, even as she told herself that he _would_ be home soon.

Perhaps she should have gone with him. Not that he needed her assistance—and not that she wasn’t needed here, because she was quite desperately, with Cutter gone and Pryce still more-or-less out of commission—but just so that she wouldn’t be feeling this horrible ache.

Selfish. She was being far too selfish, where he was concerned. And she was taking it out on everyone else around her.

So she supposed she couldn’t blame Doug when he came to see who had just come home, took one look at her, handed her the microwave burrito he’d been holding, wrapped in a paper towel, and told her she wasn’t allowed to interact with other people until she’d eaten something and taken a nap.

She resented that, too. She was used to being the person who fussed over other people. “I—“

“You have been cranky as all get-out. Eat something. Go to bed. It always makes me feel better.”

She sighed and folded back the paper towel. “Fine. I’ll be in my bedroom if anyone needs me.”

“Yeah, sure.” Doug gave her a dubious look. “Maybe if it’s someone I don’t like.”

“Douglas!”

“You’re the one who’s been snapping people’s heads off, old lady.”

“ _Douglas,_ ” she said again, this time a warning.

“Nope!” He turned and headed back down the hallway towards the kitchen, waving over his shoulder at her. “I’m not talking to you right now. Eat!”

Rosemary sighed and tore into the burrito as she headed up the stairs towards the bedrooms. Doug was right. She was ravenous. And all right, maybe she hadn’t been sleeping as well as she ought to be with Alexander gone. She’d just gotten used to his snoring, was all. So much so that she could almost hear it as she headed down the hall towards their bedroom.

…wait, was that _actually_ snoring she was hearing? She shook her head to clear it, but there it was, at the edge of her hearing, a raspy snore that was oh-so familiar.

She opened the door to their bedroom.

She hadn’t expected Alexander to be back yet, not for another couple of days at least. And she definitely hadn’t expected to enter the room that had been theirs—and which had stubbornly remained _theirs_ instead of _hers_ to her the entire time he has been gone—to find him asleep on top of the covers.

An instant later and she was half-sprawled on top of him, letting out a low sob of relief when he turned out to be warm and solid and doing his best to help her the rest of the way onto the bed. She clung to him, taking in deep breaths of the scent of him that had been slowly fading from the bedsheets she hadn’t been able to bring herself to wash the entire time he’d been gone, marveling at the solid form of his shoulder beneath her cheek.

“Apologies,” he rasped, sounding as if he were still half asleep. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Meant to wait up for you. Have not yet adjusted to this time zone.”

She couldn’t bring herself to care. “How are you?” she asked, her own voice as raspy as his.

He was frowning down at her hand, where it was resting against his chest. “Is that a burrito?”

Rosemary snorted, the unexpected laughter lightening her desperation. By some miracle, what was left of the burrito hadn’t oozed too much; though the contents of microwave burritos were mostly mush, they tended to solidify quickly as they cooled, and this particular burrito was almost room-temperature. “Want some?” she asked, her voice shaking, though she couldn’t tell if it was because she was holding back another laugh or about to start sobbing. “Doug shoved it on me when I got home.”

He made a face at that, but took the remains of the offered burrito and tore into it just as enthusiastically as she had. As he did, Rosemary grabbed a kleenex and dabbed at the smudge of refried bean and hot sauce that she’d accidentally left on his shirt front.

Alexander finished what was left of the burrito and stared blankly at the paper towel that had been wrapped around it, as if not entirely certain what it was doing in his hand.

“Need something more?” she asked, taking the paper towel out of his hand.

He shook his head. “Just you,” he rasped. And then he cleared his throat. “And perhaps glass of water.”

Rosemary laughed again, just as shaky as her voice had been. “Sure. I can do that.”

When she returned from their en-suite bathroom, Alexander had removed the shirt and tossed it into the laundry basket in the corner of their room. His ribs were showing, a distressing sign of his tendency to forget to eat when he was hard at work and she wasn’t there to fuss over him.

_I missed you_ , she tried to say.

But the words wouldn’t come out, so instead she came back to his side and fussed over him the way she hadn’t had a chance to these past months.

And if she ignored the way he was looking at her, maybe she could protect her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> With the posting of this fic, this account, aka where I store all the Rosemary/Hilbert nonsense, is going to ever-so-briefly be at 69 fics and 696969 words.
> 
> This will change almost immediately, but I thought it was worth noting.


End file.
